Henry I of Germany's 929 military campaign in archaeological perspective

In 929, King Henry I of Germany (919–36) launched an exceptionally successful offensive against the Slav polities along the length of his eastern frontier. This campaign, which is recorded in contemporary written accounts, has long been known to historians, and its importance in the political history of the German kingdom is undisputed. However, to date, there is no book‐length or article‐length study devoted to Henry's military successes in 929. This article fills that striking lacuna by drawing on the vast body of information provided through excavations, which sheds considerable new light on the scale and sophistication of Henry I's undertaking.     

An alternative approach to hab 1,2‐2,20

Abstract

In the first part the ideological nature of the OT historical narrative is stressed, which means that it is hardly usable as a historical source alone. Therefore, in the second part three demands are formulated should we decide to use an OT text in a historical analysis: 1) the event we want to investigate has to be mentioned in the OT, 2) must correlate with material from archaeological excavations, and 3) must be mentioned in at least one external written source. The final part is devoted to an overview over the Scandinavian excavations at Tel Fukhar, Jordan.     

Commentary. The Diseases of Alexander the Great

The accompanying articles that speculate that Alexander the Great had a traumatic carotid dissection or congenital cervical scoliosis demonstrate the difficulties in retrospective diagnosis as a historical enterprise. The extant primary sources were written centuries after Alexander’s death and are ambiguous in their original languages, and even more so in translation. Thus we cannot be certain what illness Alexander actually had. Furthermore, anachronistic diagnosis removes Alexander from the medical context of this time, telling us little of historical significance about him. Such investigations also illustrate the more general limits that the absence of context imposes on the study of ancient history.     

Neurognostics Answer

Although many individuals contributed to the development of the science of cerebral localization, its conceptual framework is the work of a single man—John Hughlings Jackson (1835–1911), a Victorian physician practicing in London. Hughlings Jackson's formulation of a neurological science consisted of an axiomatic basis, an experimental methodology, and a clinical neurophysiology. His axiom—that the brain is an exclusively sensorimotor machine—separated neurology from psychiatry and established a rigorous and sophisticated structure for the brain and mind. Hughlings Jackson's experimental method utilized the focal lesion as a probe of brain function and created an evolutionary structure of somatotopic representation to explain clinical neurophysiology. His scientific theory of cerebral localization can be described as a weighted ordinal representation. Hughlings Jackson's theory of weighted ordinal representation forms the scientific basis for modern neurology. Though this science is utilized daily by every neurologist and forms the basis of neuroscience, the consequences of Hughlings Jackson's ideas are still not generally appreciated. For example, they imply the intrinsic inconsistency of some modern fields of neuroscience and neurology. Thus, “cognitive imaging” and the “neurology of art”—two topics of modern interest—are fundamentally oxymoronic according to the science of cerebral localization. Neuroscientists, therefore, still have much to learn from John Hughlings Jackson.     

It’s hard to be down when you’re up: interpreting cultural heritage through alternative media

Heritage places are characteristically imbued with a multiplicity of meanings contingent on the specificities of the society, time and space in which such places are perceived. The interpretation of places also depends on the affordances of the representational medium through which these places are perceived and the ways in which such a medium is socially deployed and interpreted. Using the ancient settlement of Sirkap, located in modern-day Pakistan, as a case study, the present article demonstrates that a change in the representational medium entails a change in the interpretation of archaeological records. Most conventional historical accounts of Sirkap use two-dimensional site maps and city plans as the primary media to represent the urban fabric of the ancient settlement. These media lend themselves to interpreting the Block D Apsidal Temple complex as the dominant socio-religious structure in the affluent northern parts of the settlement. When the authors developed an interactive three-dimensional reconstruction of Sirkap using gaming technology – a medium that allows users, through their avatars, to explore the settlement from the standpoint of a pedestrian – it was immediately obvious that the aforementioned Block D Apsidal Temple complex did not demand such an interpretation. Instead, the authors argue that, at least in the affluent northern parts of the settlement, the northern gate, its adjacent fortifications, and the Block A stupa court were the dominant structures. Such an interpretation leads the authors to question the canonical understanding of the role of the state and its military apparatus in the socio-religious life of Sirkap.     

Nested assemblages: migrants,war heritage,informal learning and national identities

ABSTRACT

This article examines relations between Anzac heritage and Australian national identity, among migrant visitors to the Australian War Memorial (AWM). What meaning could a story derived from Australian involvement in the First World War have to migrants who moved to Australia after the Second World War? Participants in qualitative interviews were eleven first-generation Australians, whose countries of birth were England, Greece, Ireland, New Zealand, Philippines, Scotland, South Africa and Sri Lanka, with parental countries of birth extending to Austria, Germany, India and Japan. Drawing on sociomaterial assemblage theory, the findings illustrate the concept of nested assemblages. At increasing scalar levels, the migrants form visitor-AWM assemblages, they may (or may not) feel part of a national Anzac heritage assemblage, and as migrants they are entangled in multiple national assemblages concurrently. Assemblages pertaining to family, faith, learning and memorialising were additional networks at play. Mapping interrelations amongst these assemblages showed migrants as actively gathering and interpreting heritage, sometimes as the enactment of national identity and at other times as the performance of informal, lifelong learning. The findings have importance to institutions seeking to be responsive to diverse and changing populations, particularly those wrestling with tensions around national identity.     

Ber Borokhov

The task of this article is to pose the question: Can there be a principled anti-Zionism? That is, can there be an anti-Zionism that escapes the scourge of anti-Semitism? After suggesting criteria by which this may be possible, the article excavates a tradition of Jewish anti-Zionism (or Zionist agnosticism) in the past that can hardly be branded anti-Semitic. The first current of this tradition flows out of early-twentieth-century Germany, where Jewish thinkers, in conscious opposition to Zionists, envisaged a Judaism that did not submit to the contingencies of time or space. The second current, comprised of twentieth-century Orthodox Jews, similarly opposed Zionism for its attempt to return Jews to history and to their ancestral homeland. After following these overlapping currents, the article concludes by returning to the contemporary scene and inquiring whether a principled Jewish anti-Zionism is possible today.     

Geographical knowledge and scientific survey in the construction of Italian Libya

Studies of colonialism and imperial cultures have increasingly recognized the roles of geographical knowledges in European efforts to construct the colonial world materially and imaginatively. Simultaneously, the discipline of geography has undergone a thorough self-critique of its part in the constitution of colonial space. This article discusses the imbrication of geographical knowledges and colonialism in Italy, and especially how the production and circulation of geographical knowledges about Libya worked hand in hand with its territorial occupation and control. In particular, the article discusses the expeditions directed and co-ordinated by the Italian Geographical Society that were despatched into the Saharan interior in the early 1930s to produce 'scientific' representations of the region. The article examines the roles of geographical sciences in the construction of Italian Libya, but particularly how this performance of 'colonial science' surveyed Libya's populations and contributed to their classification as 'primitive' and 'Other'. These conclusions supported Italian authority in the region, but also reinforced the development of a 'colonial consciousness' among Italians as African space and peoples were rendered legible by European epistemologies.     

Book reviews

Selwyn Ilan Troen and Benjamin Pinkus, eds., Organizing Rescue: National Jewish Solidarity in the Modern Period, London, Frank Cass, 1992, pp. xi, 424.

Idith Zertal, From Catastrophe to Power: Jewish Illegal Immigration to Palestine 1945–1948 (Hebrew). Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers, 1996. 674 pp.; notes; bibliography; index.

Yoav Gelber, Jewish‐Transjordanian Relations, 1921–48, London: Frank Cass, 1997. 320 pp., glossary, sources and bibliography, index.

Moshe Shemesh, The Palestinian Entity, 1959–1974; Arab Politics and the PLO, Second (Revised) Edition, London: Frank Cass, 1996. xxiii, 433pp., bibliography, index.

Yeshayahu A. Jelinek, ed., Zwischen Moral und Realpolitik: Deutsch‐israelisch Bezeihungen 1945–1965: Eine Doku‐mentensammlung. Gelingen: Bleicher Verlag, 1997. 687 pp.

Angelika Timm, Jewish Claims Against East Germany: Moral Obligations and Pragmatic Policy. Budapest: Central European University Press, 1997, xi + 291pp.